This fall’s presidential election may be the most racially divided ever, speakers at a University of Georgia forum said Friday.

A recent poll had Obama garnering 39 percent of the white vote. Four years ago, he got 43 percent of the white vote, more even than Al Gore did in 2004, said Ralph Reed, a UGA graduate and CEO of the public relations firm Century Strategies.

Rising to the top in the corporate world depends as much on luck as anything else, two top executives with Caterpillar Inc. told a University of Georgia audience Friday.

“I’m very lucky in my career,” said Douglas Oberhelman, chief executive officer of Caterpillar, one of the world’s leading heavy equipment manufacturers with about $66 billion in revenues last year and a gross profit of nearly $16 billion.

Farmers in Georgia and other southeastern states might actually benefit as the world’s atmosphere heats up in the first part of the 21st century.

“I think we’re really in good shape for the long term, compared to some parts of the country,” said University of Georgia agricultural climatologist Pam Knox. “The Southeast is really well positioned for the future in terms of climate change.”

Former University of Georgia English professor George Marshall died Wednesday at the age of 90.

A man of gentle wit and fierce intellect, Marshall was for 10 years chairman of the board for the Teachers Retirement System of Georgia, widely credited as one of the strongest teacher retirement systems in the country.

Marshall was also named by his colleagues to be chairman of a faculty committee investigating academic policies at UGA in the wake of an athletic scandal that tarnished the university’s reputation in the mid-1980s.

More than 200 students at St. Joseph Catholic School started classes Wednesday in the school’s new building on Epps Bridge Parkway.

Classes are starting nearly a month later than normal this year because construction on the school building failed to conclude in time for the usual start date in early August, but few in line Wednesday morning to enter the new building for the first time minded.